Thursday, 18 August 2011

How to make good Cider in large quantities

Clean your apples thoroughly, cutting out any bruises or damaged parts. As a rule, it is not recommended to use any fruit for cider you would not eat as it is.

Cut your apples into quarters or use our fruit crusher to do this for you. Then press your apples through a straining bag using a cider press.

Store the cider juice in a sealed container below 40 degrees Fahrenheit for up to 2 weeks, or freeze for extended storage.

The trick to making cider and not vinegar is to FILL your container to the top with your pressed apple juice. If you only half fill that bucket you're going to get vinegar. Yeast need an anaerobic environment. So the more space - hence air - left in the container contributes to the vinegar taste. Co2 is heavier than oxygen and will eventually be purged through the valve at the top.

Choose a variety of apples, and process each separately, then combine the juice to sample different flavors and see the difference in the colors you may produce using golden, green, and red apples.

Just remember, Whatever the size of your container/bucket you must fill the container as close to the top as possible with your squeezed apple juice. If you do not do this, if you only half fill the container, and you will get vinegar instead of cider.

About our Fruit PressesGroves are excited to bring our Cider Fruit Presses online and in-store (around 8th September). Our cider presses are capable of crushing everything from grapes, oranges, lemons, strawberries to large apples. Why not make some homebrew Wine from the Grapes or Cider from the Apples?

For large hard fruit such as apples, the fruit must be prepared pre crushing, so we recommend you buy the Aluminium 7 litre fruit crusher that fits onto all our presses.

The fruit press also comes with one free fruit straining bag that you insert into the main basket so the efficiency off the press is 100%. The straining bag will also help catch pips, seeds and other plant waste you don't want to find in your freshly pressed apple or fruit juice.

All fruit presses are beautifully made, with a heavy duty pressed steel base covered with a hard wearing enamel coating, a beech cage bound with enameled steel rings, a stainless steel spindle and cast iron press mechanism. Our presses range from 6 litres perfect for making juice in small quantities up to 75 litres for large quantities of juice/cider.